Light emitting diodes (LED's) are fast becoming the preferable light source for automotive lighting applications, as they consume less power but provide light output which is becoming acceptable for such applications. Near field lenses (NFL's) are used to collect as well as to collimate the light from a LED source. Additional optic power may be added to the NFL to create a certain desired beam pattern. Existing NFL's have very high light collection efficiency (typically 70-90%) regardless of their size, but the output beam size for a given source depends on the size of the lens. The larger the lens size (i.e. the larger the starting focal length of the lens), the smaller of the output beam size and the higher the peak intensity. However, manufacturing larger lenses poses complex molding issues and takes higher molding cycle time, thus requiring expensive molding tools and processes.
Accordingly, there exists a need to provide a lighting assembly having a lens that provides the output beam size and peak intensity for automotive applications, while reducing the time, cost and complexity of manufacture.